Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics Review: Core i7-4950HQ Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:01 AM ESTQuick Sync Performance
The 128MB eDRAM has a substantial impact on QuickSync performance. At a much lower TDP/clock speed, the i7-4950HQ is able to pretty much equal the performance of the i7-4770K. Running Haswell's new better quality transcode mode, the 4950HQ is actually 30% faster than the fastest desktop Haswell. This is just one of many reasons that we need Crystalwell on a K-series socketed desktop part.
CPU Performance
I spent most of the week wrestling with Iris Pro and gaming comparisons, but I did get a chance to run some comparison numbers between the i7-4950HQ CRB and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display running Windows 8 in Boot Camp. In this case the 15-inch rMBP was running a 2.6GHz Core i7-3720QM with 3.6GHz max turbo. Other than the base clock (the i7-4950HQ features a 2.4GHz base clock), the two parts are very comparable as they have the same max turbo frequencies. I paid attention to turbo speeds while running all of the benchmarks and for the most part found the two systems were running at the same frequencies, for the same duration.
To put the results in perspective I threw in i7-3770K vs. i7-4770K results. The theory is that whatever gains the 4770K shows over the 3770K should be mirrored in the i7-4950HQ vs. i7-3720QM comparison. Any situations where the 4950HQ exceeds the 4770K's margin of victory over Ivy Bridge are likely due to the large 128MB L4 cache.
| Peak Theoretical GPU Performance | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cinebench 11.5 (ST) | Cinebench 11.5 (MT) | POV-Ray 3.7RC7 (ST) | POV-Ray 3.7RC7 (MT) | 7-Zip Benchmark | 7-Zip Benchmark (Small) | x264 HD - 1st Pass | x264 HD - 2nd Pass | ||||||||||||||
| Intel Core i7-4770K | 1.78 | 8.07 | - | 1541.3 | 23101 | - | 79.1 | 16.5 | |||||||||||||
| Intel Core i7-3770K | 1.66 | 7.61 | - | 1363.6 | 22810 | - | 74.8 | 14.6 | |||||||||||||
| Haswell Advantage | 7.2% | 6.0% | - | 13.0% | 1.3% | - | 5.7% | 13.0% | |||||||||||||
| Intel Core i7-4950HQ | 1.61 | 7.38 | 271.7 | 1340.9 | 21022 | 14360 | 73.9 | 14.0 | |||||||||||||
| Intel Core i7-3720QM | 1.49 | 6.39 | 339.1 | 1178.3 | 19749 | 12670 | 66.2 | 12.9 | |||||||||||||
| Haswell Advantage | 8.1% | 15.5% | 24.8% | 13.8% | 6.4% | 13.3% | 11.6% | 8.5% | |||||||||||||
| Crystalwell Advantage | 0.9% | 9.5% | - | 0.8% | 5.1% | - | 5.9% | -4.5% | |||||||||||||
I didn't have a ton of time to go hunting for performance gains, but a couple of these numbers looked promising. Intel claims that with the right workload, you could see huge double digit gains. After I get back from Computex I plan on poking around a bit more to see if I can find exactly what those workloads might be.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
177 Comments
View All Comments
beginner99 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Impressive...if you ignore the pricing.tipoo - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
?velatra - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
On page 4 of the article there 's a word "presantive" which should probably be "representative."jabber - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
May I ask why The Sims is never featured in your reviews on such GPU setups?Why? Well in my line of business, fixing and servicing lots of laptops with the integrated chips the one game group that crops up over and over again is The Sims!
Never had a laptop in from the real world that had any of the games you benchmarked here. But lots of them get The Sims played on them.
JDG1980 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Agreed. The benchmark list is curiously disconnected from what these kind of systems are actually used to do in the real world. Seldom does anyone use a laptop of any kind to play "Triple-A" hardcore games. Usually it's stuff like The Sims and WoW. I think those should be included as benchmarks for integrated graphics, laptop chipsets, and low-end HTPC-focused graphics cards.tipoo - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Because the Sims is much easier to run than most of these. Just because people tried running it on GMA graphics and wondered why it didn't work doesn't mean it's a demanding workload.jabber - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Yes but the point is the games tested are pretty much pointless. How many here would bother to play them on such equipped laptops?Pretty much none.
But plenty 'normal' folks who would buy such equipment will play plenty of lesser games. In my job looking after 'normal' folks thats quite important when parents ask me about buying a laptop for their kid that wants to play a few games on it.
The world and sites such as Anandtech shouldnt just revolve around the whims of 'gamer dudes' especially as it appears the IT world is generally moving away from gamers.
It's a general computing world in future, rather than a enthusiast computing world like it was 10 years ago. I think some folks need to re-align their expectations going forward.
tipoo - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I mean, if it can run something like Infinite or even Crysis 3 fairly well, you can assume it would run the Sims well.Quizzical - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
It would help immensely if you would say what you were comparing it to. As you are surely aware, a system that includes an A10-5800K but cripples it by leaving a memory channel vacant and running the other at 1333 MHz won't perform at all similarly to a properly built system with the same A10-5800K with two 4 GB modules of 1866 MHz DDR3 in properly matched channels.That should be an easy fix by adding a few sentences to page 5, but without it, the numbers don't mean much, as you're basically considering Intel graphics in isolation without a meaningful AMD comparison.
Quizzical - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Ah, it looks like the memory clock speeds have been added. Thanks for that.